Category Archives: Cartoons

Another anime season is upon us, filled with all sorts of stuff. Now while there are some strong contenders this season, I will say that overall it feels a bit weak. Certainly not as strong as last season, which I saw some people also calling weak. That does make me wonder if anyone thinks this is a really strong season? I didn’t even hit ten shows I definitely want to watch this time. While there are some that are decent, just Not For Rita, a lot of these just aren’t that good.

Unfortunately we’ve ended up with another weird release schedule, so it’s taken a while to get through everything. And you know I like releasing the whole thing at once. But now we’re finally here.

And while I have tried to avoid any sorts of spoilers or impressions about the shows before I watch them, it has been impossible to avoid everything. To that end, we have an entirely new feature this time. While there’s always stuff I end up missing for various reasons, this time there’s also three shows I am actively avoiding. I felt like I had to do that, considering how badly I got burned by Love Tyrant. I can’t just wade into stuff I hear is really bad, just to see how bad it is. It’s not healthy.

Somehow we have reached the end of another anime season, and the next one has already begun. I guess I’ll have to start on that soon after I’m done writing this.

This has been a pretty strong season, I feel. Though not everything panned out as well as it might have. There were several instances of missed potential, and lacking execution. But even among those there were often some decent results anyway. Like a sense of “this is quite good, but it could have been great if not for [X]”, you know?

I’ve been keeping up with my fiction writing, as you can tell by my messy blog, and consequently I’ve fallen behind on anime several times. Which has caused me to cut a few things I maybe wouldn’t have normally. Anything that was no longer sufficiently exciting me had to go. I just don’t have the same amount of time, and I’m hoping Summer Season won’t have too many good shows.

Cor, this season feels a bit larger than the last one. And a bit beefier. Will be hard to make cuts this season. I’l leave that for the end of this post.

Now in general it’s not a new issue for anime to fall into the “this could have been good, or at least better, without that one male main character”, but I’ve been feeling that theme more strongly in this season’s early offerings.

There seems to be a significant amount of harem shows this season too, a couple of which are unmistakably teen-wanks, even though they make a few token efforts towards concealing that.

So as early impressions go, there’s been a lot weighing towards both sides of the scale. And as some shows have their second episodes out, I have heard things that make me grateful I already decided to not keep watching certain shows. It’s almost like there’s a contest towards the low end of who can be the absolute worst. Not something worth fighting over if you ask me.

I have gotten somewhat used to the Winter seasons being fairly chill affairs, but this one has felt a bit weird.

Most of the shows I expected to be good let me down, and the ones I never would have expected much from beforehand turned into my favourites. And of course the one I really wished I could have gotten into and liked, but absolutely couldn’t get on with. Hopefully I can put that behind me now that the season is over and I won’t see people talking about it every week.

I don’t really have more preamble. There’s a lot of games out right now that occupy my thoughts, so let’s jump right in. You can also check out my early impressions, and mid-season update.

I am slowly coming out of my January hibernation mode, and the world is on fire. That’s not what we’re here to talk about today though.

As I’ve had little energy for much else, I’ve ended up watching more anime than what I would consider normal. Not more from this season, but I’ve checked out a couple of recommendations, and re-watched some favourites. Figure I might as well throw those in, but feel free to skip that section if you’re not interested.

You can check out my early impressions here, so without further ado let’s get started. There’s a variety of things to cover.

New year, new anime! After the massive autumn season it feels a little weird to have such a small season to deal with. I think there’s about a dozen less shows total, and there’s several sequels, so there wasn’t really that much for me to check out this time.

I’d also say it’s perhaps a somewhat weak season. While there are several good shows, there’s a lot more that are bad, mediocre, or just dull. And of the good ones, there’s maybe only two or three I think have the potential to be great. I don’t think I’m going to have much problem finding enough stuff to watch though. It just probably won’t be quite up to last season’s standard.

Back to normal procedure with both [Dropped] and [Maybe] tags again applied. I was tempted to also give them a grade, like from A to F, but that’s more effort than it’s worth. If you missed it, I also wrote about last year’s most noteworthy shows here.

BanG Dream is not on here because it’s still a week out, and I don’t want to wait. With that said, let’s get started.

As I mentioned in my Games post, 2016 has not been a bad year for entertainment. Even though it has been really bad in a lot of other ways. I’ve had to cut down a lot on what I watch, but I’ve still found plenty of good stuff. Even a new favourite anime of all time.

I did have to come to terms with just not having enough mental energy to put up with certain kinds of shows though. I’ve always been bad when it comes to second-hand embarrassment stuff, but I’ve also had to cut most dramas and stuff with heavy subject matters. I wish it wasn’t the case, but I just find it too difficult to watch now. I still give them a try because I know some are able to overcome that difficulty, but I’ve had to drop the vast majority of them. Often to my own great annoyance.

There’s also the issue that I’ve gotten a bit saturated and burned out on action shows and hetero romances. Again there are some I think are good and different enough to overcome that and still engage me, but I seem to have fallen into a bit of a small box regarding what I will and won’t watch.

Also yet another year where I try and fail to get into Gundam.

So what is there left that I want to highlight from this past year? I guess you’ll have to read on and find out. (Some of these categories might be entirely arbitrary and/or simply excuses to talk about a show.)